No Need To Be Koi About It - Use A Polariser

The Japanese fish in this picture are pretty contented. They live at the Asakusa Temple in Tokyo and are cared for in the ornamental pond - there are a number of signs warning people not to feed them, so I suspect they are sometimes too well cared for. No matter - they are spectacular and friendly. Perfect subjects for a picture.

Except when the skylight blocks out the surface of the water. Then you see whatever is bouncing off that surface. It is the same with shop windows and other shiny surfaces.

Answer is, and always has been, to use a polarising filter on your lens. The older types were known as linear polarisers and did a very good job of seeing down into water surfaces. The newer types are called circular polarisers and may be a little less effective in actually penetrating the surface, but do give a more accurate light meter reading. The Circ Pol's are the ones most often supplied for modern digital cameras.

We've got 'em from Kenko, Hoya, Promaster, and B+W. They are not as cheap as UV filters - never could be - but they are a pretty essential tool for landscape and marine photographers. Useful, too for correcting colours under trees in open sunshine - you can lose the blue fill from Western Australian skies. particularly recommended for bridal work in these circumstances.

Studio? Well there are times when you need to see into things and these can help. You can also use them with sheets of polarising film and studio lights if you are going to copy glossy or textured flat art work. a little more complex than just twirling it in front of the lens when you are out at the beach, but essential to capture the true colours of some canvases.

Note for newbies: Either put a UV on the lens or a Polariser. Not together. Too many glass surfaces, and sometimes you start to unscrew the UV when you think you are turning the Circ Pol.

Channelling Fred Spira - The Clear Lens Cap

A free clear lens cap to the first person who comes up to Uncle Dick and correctly identifies Fred Spira.

The rest of you will have to buy your own, but the cost won't be onerous. We have a whole rack of extremely useful clear lens caps in our Frugal Foto Fun section. They range from 62  mm to 77 mm. and have good solid mounting rings. They are uncoated optical glass that will protect your valuable lens.

If you have ever missed a snap shot in the confusion of trying to take off a conventional cap and screw on a lens hood...well, just keep one of the Emolux clear lens caps on and shoot as fast as you can. UFO's and costume malfunctions wait for no-one!

And they're only $ 10 each.

Ivory And Ebony

The advance of digital photography has seen some remarkable trends - none more so than the photograph that slows a waterfall to a mist - or levels a moving sea. Or removes all the people from a busy city street. We mean the interposition of a very dark neutral density filter into the light path which permits a very slow shutter speed.

The name that is on everyone's lips is Big Stopper - it is the catchy tag for the Lee company's 100mm x 100mm resin filter. It fits into their standard holders and drops 10 stops of light. I wish I had invented the name Big Stopper - it is the sort of thing that you can bandy about at a camera club meeting and sound really cool.

Oh, would that you could go into a shop and buy one. Like into our shop, for instance. Because of their great popularity and the drought that has been affecting the English filter fields...we never seem to have enough of them delivered to satisfy the clubmen. Please do not think that I am criticising English manufacturing practice - I am sure that if you wanted a Quad amplifier or a Manton shotgun you could find them at any corner store...

But for whatever reason, the Lee filters are hard to get. We have found another good answer for the landscape photographer. B+W make 1000x filters in screw-in sizes that will do the same job as the Big Stopper. Kenko make an ND 400 that gives you 9 stops of darkening. And Promaster make a wonderful variable neutral density filter that looks as though it would do 1 to 10 stops. To prove it to myself I put one over a light box at the two extremities of adjustment - have a look at how dark it gets.

The video people can also use this sort of a variable filter to do fade-outs at the end of video shots.

I should purchase one in the largest size lens that I use, then adapt it to smaller lenses with simple step-dow rings. The whole deal would be cheaper than Lee, but don't let that influence you.

The Fred Astaire Of Filters

The French.

It's always the French. Every time.

I bought a Renault R 10 motor car in 1966. 4-wheel disc brakes. 4-wheel independent suspension. Most wonderful seats in any car short of a Rolls Royce. And a 998cc engine and no radio...A set of design decisions on the dashboard that left you indecisive...for the six years that I drove it I was never entirely certain what several of the lights meant. I just put oil in the tiny crankcase and hoped for the best...

That said, I contemplated the new line of Cokin filters on the wall. These are round screw-in types - not the square plastic ones that the brand is famous for. They come in a retailer's nightmare of a box - 20% bigger than any other box on the wall and consequently nothing stacks next to it. The French.

Inside the improbably big but undoubtedly stylish packaging is the thinnest UV filter in the universe. See heading picture. These screw onto 77mm and 82mm fittings and then, quite frankly, seem to disappear into the lens itself. Certainly no chance of vignetting on even the widest lenses.

The really good thing for the user is that after purchasing this fine product, screwing it onto the lens, and cleaning it with a Hoodman Lens Cleanse...you can throw the box away. Or use it to store Renault R10 motor cars.

Tio Dick's Feijoada

Look it up, look it up...

This tasty stew of assorted ingredients has something for every taste. As it is a cold day, we will start with a hot item:

1. Rollei 35 RF camera fitted with a Sonnar 40mm f:2.8 lens

This has just come into the s/h department and is pretty darn rare. It is a modern 35mm rangefinder camera made to Rollei specifications by Cosina in Japan. Some people will recognise the shape as being similar to Voigtländer cameras from the same stable. Similar, but that Sonnar lens will spell the difference for the user. This is a chance for traditionalists to do the 35mm RF in style.

2. Promaster 2500 EDF flash

Cheap as chips, and you can get these with either Nikon or Canon dedication. For cameras with just a plain hot shoe they'll work in auto mode so if your flash shots from the in-built flash are just not cutting it, this is a very good buy.

3. Honl Lens Wrap

Ballistic nylon on the outside and fleece on the inside with two velcro fasteners. Wrap your precious up in this and pop it in the camera bag or suitcase for travel.

4. B+W 1000x neutral density filter

For all those people who want to clean city streets of passers-by or to smooth out waterfalls and seas - this is a screw-in answer. Like the big rectangular stopper filters, but you can get this one in regular round shape for 62mm, 72mm, and 77mm. The heading image is a picture of a black cat taken in a coal bin at midnight with one of these filters. Notice the smooth fur tones on the back of the animal.

New Packaging For A Favourite Product

Here's the new product packaging that came in this week for the Lee Big Stopper filter.

The Big Stopper is Lee's way of slowing the world down - 10 stops of light reduction with no annoying colour shifts. You can smooth out skies, make waterfall misty, and put a soft fog effect on the restless sea.

You can photograph city streets full of busy travellers and have most of them disappear - of course you can do that by broadcasting live from Parliament, but we're talking art, not angst.

This new packaging is fun - a neat tin box with internal padding to protect the filter. I have no idea why they changed it from the  previous padded pouch, but it makes a nice change on the shelves.

Note: Big Stoppers sell like hot cakes and are less fattening. If you want one get it now before we sell out again.

Purity and Harmony In Your Camera Bag - A New Age Dawns

Arise, ye downtrodden. No, wait, that's a different sales pitch. May Day is over...

Peace, brothers and sisters. We are here to bring you pure harmony and a clear view of the world. We are here to protect you. We are here to help you resist atmospheric haze, oil, dust, and soil.

Yes, soil.

And all this in the thinnest possible way. We have just taken delivery of a number of Cokin round screw-in filters for various lens sizes.

We've got UV and circular polariser filters that can attach to the fussiest wide angle lenses without creating any vignetting. All the way up from 37mm to 77. They are especially coated and packed in enormous filter cases.

Ask for the Pure Harmonie model of filter.

The Little Guys Get To Play Too - With Lee Filters

We've been selling Lee filters for years to professional and advanced enthusiast photographers. They value them for the clarity of the filter - no colour casts - and for the sturdiness of the holder system. They can get some filters that are unique. And they can adapt them to some very strange lenses...albeit in some very strange ways.

Okay - up to now I have only known about their big range - lo and behold we now have some of their Seven Five product in store. It seems to be a miniaturised version of the larger filter holder and of the graduated neutral density filters.

The principle of the thing is the same - a dedicated adaptor ring for the front of your lens, a holder clamped onto it, and the neutral density filter sliding up and down in the holder. But in the new small size, it can go onto mirrorless and micro 4/3 cameras.

The astute photo enthusiasts will realise that this might free them from having to take a large DSLR on a long trek into the bush for a landscape photo just to make use of an ND grad system. Now they can take their Panasonic, Olympus, Nikon, Canon, or Fuji and pack it into a very much smaller space.

Those who still wish to take larger gear are recommended to contemplate a 4 x 5 monorail outfit with full compendium up the side of Bluff Knoll in a rainstorm...

Note from the pack shots that there is a starter kit with one ND grad and also a three pack of different strength filters. They are all small enough so as to justify carrying the lot on your next venture - local or overseas.